Peterson explains "Perforated House"

Judging from public reaction, the new house on Sarasota’s Prospect Street at Orange Avenue, designed by architect Guy Peterson, certainly moves the human spirit.

A Herald-Tribune story on May 11 about the house was among the most viewed articles on HeraldTribune.com, and the online article drew more than 60 comments from readers. That is unheard of for a story about architecture or real estate on the site.

The home of Gary and Beth Spencer at 101 Prospect St., Sarasota, was designed by architect Guy Peterson. It is among the most progressive, and controversial, houses ever to be built in Sarasota. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 5-7-2013.

The house commands attention through its geometry, its color and its location on a well-traveled street in a vintage neighborhood.

There is nothing quite like it, certainly here, and perhaps anywhere in Florida. It is a bold design statement. Peterson seems to be telling other architects and homeowners: From courage comes progression.

One of just a few houses along that side of Orange Avenue that faces south rather than west, the orientation (same as the house that it replaced) was a driving force in the design.

The dominant architectural element is a wall perforated with about 150 openings, each 8 inches square and deep. This is a favorite device of Peterson, who used it at his 1996 Theisen House on Longbay Boulevard, near the Sarasota-Bradenton airport, and his parents’ home in the late 1980s, among others.

On Longbay, it brings light into a guest room while filtering the view of nearby houses. On Prospect, the wall is an innovative way to provide views from the inside while offering privacy from passers-by; there are a lot of those lately.

Just as important as these small openings are the tower’s four “shadowboxes.” Like many modernist buildings, the Perforated House does not have eaves to deflect sun and rainwater. The cantilevered concrete frame of each shadowbox shields these openings from the weather while providing large views of the tree canopy. One of them is deep enough to stand in or place a chair.

A window in the home of Gary and Beth Spencer at 1601 Prospect St., Sarasota. Guy Peterson was the architect. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 5-7-2013.

Most of the perforations are on a tower that rises out of the main part of the house, which is a one-story structure, enclosed by a 6-foot white concrete wall, that Peterson calls a “plinth.” The privacy wall gives the impression that the house, with 3,500 square feet of air-conditioned area, is larger than it really is. But it surrounds landscaped area as well as the pool and deck.

The ground floor contains most of the important spaces — living, dining, kitchen, master suite, laundry room, second and third bedrooms. A small guest house sits at the east end of the pool. The living room wall, facing north to the lap pool, is an 80-foot stretch of impact-resistant folding glass walls from Solar Innovations that open in accordion fashion.

In the tower, the second floor has a study and the third has a hobby room and outdoor patio. Stairs lead to an uncovered rooftop terrace, which has a “summer kitchen” and seating.

In an interview, Peterson credited Damien Blumetti of his office for project oversight, Dane Spencer for landscape architecture and Dean Thompson for construction, and offered these insights into the house’s unique design:

Q: In the 1950s, Paul Rudolph experimented with concrete panels to provide shade, horizontally at Riverview High and vertically at Sarasota High, and a century ago Frank Lloyd Wright expanded roof overhangs at the Robie House in Chicago. Is this house all about controlling light?

A: The goal was to control sunlight and views, as the house is on a busy street corner. Also, there were power lines that we tried to avoid. Most important, the owners want to live in a house that is filled with light, and it is full of light all the time. The white surfaces — the concrete, the tabby polished floors — all reflect light.

Q: The house has four shadow boxes, one on the east facade, one on the west, two on the south. What is their purpose?

A: The shadow boxes are good for sun control. They are spatial — they create space. You can go into them and they become a porch, an elevated piece that you can occupy and look at the views. They frame views as well as create shading and help ventilation.

One of them, in the study, protrudes out to offer rain protection over the front door below. There are passive design strategies in use as they are sun-control devices, view portals and space that can be occupied.

Q: Rudolph, Wright and other great architects studied sunlight control in different ways, perhaps more conventional but innovative at the time. Your thoughts?

A: Look at Rudolph’s Walker Guest House, with the flaps that go up and down. It is either a glass fish bowl or a snug cabin. Sometimes people want a cocoon, sometimes they want to live in a fish bowl. Shadow boxes are a different way of doing it.

A lot of architects, with the new technologies today, put screens on the outside of buildings to filter light, with big walls of glass covered with aluminum screening materials. With this house, instead of putting in big windows that you can’t see out of, let’s use the wall as the perforated device. This is an opportunity to use the architecture to filter the light.

When you look at Wright’s Robie House, it has these huge overhangs, but the glass is right up below the overhangs. So your eye follows that feeling out horizontally. If I put an eave on the Spencer house, it would cover only any openings within a few feet of the eave. I put the shadow boxes where we wanted eaves over big openings. They become the eaves as architectural elements.

Architecture is basically about light, because that is how we define space. Of all the words we use as adjectives to describe our work, other than nature, light is the only one that is dynamic. You can say rhythm or structure or proportion or scale, but light is one that moves.

Perforations in the wall of the home of Gary and Beth Spencer at 1601 Prospect St. in Sarasota. The house was designed by Guy Peterson. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 4-26-2013.

Q: Unlike most of the houses you design, this one has no water views, except a sliver of the bay from the roof terrace.

A: You don’t have a lot of breathtaking views, so we elevated. Everything down below in the base — the house is about transparency. But as you walk in, you look outside and the views are contained by these architectural pieces at the ground level. When you come up into the building, then we start creating these portals of important views, but still perforating to get all the light we want into it. And then opening the house to the sky nine ways to get natural light in.

Q: How did you choose the bright white color?

A: I give credit to Richard Meier, who was asked why he did all his buildings in white, and it always resonated with me: If you do something in white, you reflect nature. The greens look greener. The blue skies look bluer. It makes things sharper, because of the contrast, rather than trying to imitate nature. I am not saying that is wrong, but white reflects nature.

The blue accents, on the tower only, were used by Le Corbusier. It is a sky blue, almost. This house is really more about the sky than it is the edges.

Harold Bubil

Harold Bubil is real estate editor of the Herald-Tribune Media Group.
Born in Newport, R.I., his family moved to Sarasota in 1958. Harold graduated from Sarasota High School in 1970 and the University of Florida in 1974 with a degree in journalism. For the Herald-Tribune, he writes and edits stories about residential real estate, architecture, green building and local development history. He also is a photographer, videographer and public speaker. Contact him via email, or at (941) 361-4805.

Last modified: May 26, 2013
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